Welcome to the blog of the California Teachers Empowerment Network. CTEN is a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the public at large with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Dear Colleague,

We have mentioned the Students Matter lawsuit (Vergara v. California) in previous
letters. The trial, which is open to the public, is set to begin in Los Angeles
this Monday January 27th and could stretch on for four weeks. Every
public school teacher in California could be affected by the judge’s ruling, as
tenure, seniority and the state’s dismissal statutes in their current state could
conceivably be eliminated. For more on the case, go to http://studentsmatter.org/

Last month we reported that CTA released a 34-page “Strategic Plan,” which only CTA members could
access. However, we have obtained a copy and it is now linked on the CTEN
website. So if you belong to another union or are an agency fee payer, you can
view it here - http://www.ctenhome.org/PDFdocs/strategic.pdf

AB 1266, also
known as the bathroom bill, which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law in
August, is still on hold as signatures are verified for an initiative that will
give citizens a chance to weigh in. The controversial legislation can be summed
up in its final 37 words: “A pupil shall be permitted to participate in
sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and
competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity,
irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”Pending the signature count, the bill
could wind up on the ballot in November. For more on the bill, go to http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB1266
- and http://www.city-journal.org/2013/cjc1126ls.html

Our legislature in Sacramento is trying to get a
Transitional Kindergarten (TK) bill into law, which would cover every four
year-old in the state. Unfortunately, there have been no studies done on TK and
those done on Head Start – a similar program – show that any benefits gained disappear
by grade 3. Importantly, Governor Jerry Brown is not convinced that universal
TK is a good idea, so its future in California is up in the air. In 2006,
voters trounced Prop. 82 – a bill that would
have “created a free, voluntary, half-day public preschool program available to
all 4-year olds” – by more than a 3-2 margin. To pay for the program, California
would have imposed a new tax on high-income individuals. To read more about the
current TK bill, go to http://edsource.org/today/2014/transitional-kindergarten-expansion-early-education-not-included-in-governors-budget-proposal/56029#.UtgfRhBQybR

The National Council on Teacher Quality has a new study which
examines “the extent to which America's traditional teacher preparation
programs offer future teachers research-based strategies to help them better
manage their classroom from the start of their teaching career. These
strategies are so strongly supported by research that
we refer to them as the Big Five.” The
five are: establishing rules, building routines, reinforcing good behavior with
praise, addressing misbehavior and maintaining engagement. NCTQ has determined
that our ed schools are not doing a good job in preparing teachers to
successfully manage their students. They explain,

The disconnect between
classroom management instruction and practice may be clearest when teacher
candidates are placed in PK-12 classrooms for a semester of student teaching.
NCTQ has created a chart that shows the rarity of instances when a strategy was
addressed in a lecture, an assignment, and also a feedback indicator on the
program's student teaching evaluation/observation forms.

Regrettably, we could
not identify a single program in the sample that did well addressing all
research-based strategies, identifying classroom management as a priority,
strategically determining how it should be taught and practiced, and employing
feedback accordingly. However, some programs are paying more attention to
research and to the alignment of instruction and practice: St. Mary's College
of Maryland, the University of Virginia and the University of
Washington-Seattle are notable for aligning instruction and practice with
research-based strategies.

Of interest to all
teachers is their pension. And those pensions are at this time at risk. Over
the past few weeks, there has been a number of pieces written about their
unsustainability. American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten
weighed in on the subject in a video that can be seen here - http://www.foxbusiness.com/live-coverage/pension-crisisHowever,
City Journal’s Steve Malanga destroys
her flawed reasoning and half-truths,

…
around the 12 minute and 30 second mark, is her contention that various
conservative groups are using a call for better actuarial standards in pension
accounting as a way to cut government worker pensions (as opposed to say,
bringing more transparency to this murky field.) She specifically names ALEC
(the American Legislative Exchange Council,
a coalition of conservative legislators) as a perpetrator of this effort to
diminish government worker pensions. It’s an odd remark considering that
interviewer Adam Shapiro introduces the issue by quoting from a Morningstar
report that’s highly critical of current actuarial standards. Is she saying the
investment adviser and the many other critics of current actuarial assumptions
are part of the ALEC plot? Beats me.

She
also claims somewhere around minute 8 that average government pensions are very
modest, just $23,000 annually. I can’t tell if she’s talking about all government
workers or just teachers, but this is the kind of statistic that needs to be
taken with a grain of salt.

On the same subject
and certainly worth reading is “The
California Teachers Association: A Failure of Leadership” by Marcia
Fritz, president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility who
states,

California’s no stranger to municipal
bankruptcy or powerful unions unable to face facts. In California, nowhere is
the abrogation of union leadership more evident than with the California
Teachers Association. CalSTRS, California’s teacher retirement system, is
massively underfunded, and will soon need increased contributions and/or
benefit reductions to keep its promises. And yet, not only has the CTA not been forthcoming with their own
reform proposals, they have actively opposed other plans, such as Mayor Chuck
Reed’s “Pension Reform Act of 2014,” that would lead to a more affordable and
thus sustainable public pension system.

For those of you who
have been inquiring – yes, the CTEN website is being renovated as we speak.
Over the years, we have piled loads of information and it is past time to
neaten things up. We hope to have all the work completed by the end of this
month.

As always, we
at CTEN want to thank you for your ongoing support. Please visit us regularly
at www.ctenhome.org We do our best to keep our website up-to-date,
but if you need any information that you can’t find, please send us an email at
cteninfo@ctenhome.org or call us at 888-290-8471 and we will
get back to you in short order.

The
state of education in America is not good. Taxes are rising to meet the
perceived need. But test scores and other meaningful measures of quality are
not improving. What is to be done? School Choice holds great promise to improve
education and lower the costs of education. But just what is school choice? How
can it promise higher quality AND lower costs?

This
unique program will answer these and other questions you have. Our Forum and
Break-out sessions will bring together top experts in School Choice to provide
a path forward for the education of our children and common sense
economics.Our experts are:

Williamson M. Evers, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member
of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education, specializes in research on education
policy especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing,
accountability, and school finance from kindergarten through high school.

Larry Sand taught elementary and middle school for over 28 years in NY
and CA. Now retired, he is president of the non-profit California Teachers
Empowerment Network - a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to
providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional
affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Lisa Snellis the director of education and child welfare at Reason
Foundation, a nonprofit think tank advancing free minds and free markets.She has frequently testified before the CA
State Legislature and numerous other state legislatures and government
agencies.She has written on school
finance, universal preschool, charter schools, and other related topics.

Ana Rita Guzman is
the founder and coordinator for the Mid-Peninsula Homeschoolers group in Palo
Alto, CA. She has overseen the education of her three children,
homeschooling them since birth, then transitioning to more traditional
institutions when appropriate. She is a strong spokesperson for
homeschooling.

The program will include an opening panel, in-depth break-out sessions
and then a final concluding summary and way-forward session covering:
- history & relevance of school funding, competition and choice
- charter schools - in CA and nationwide, their origin, growth and promise
- vouchers, credits, rebates, and private scholarships
- homeschooling alternatives
- competition, creativity and costs vs. monopoly

Join us to better understand the promises and excitement of what
real school choice can mean for the improvement of your family, school,
community and country.This event is
free of charge, but seating is limited.Please RSVP at:http://SchoolChoiceSJ.eventbrite.com